Passenger rail plods ahead - then two steps back
For all the hand wringing over cuts for Amtrak and passenger rail in the federal budget, projects and proposed projects to increase or...
Just when you need a comprehensive national passenger transportation strategy…
Not entirely unexpectedly, the Trump administration’s budget proposals for the next fiscal year, if passed by Congress in their entirety,...
Grade crossings – calls for more laws and more technology may not cut it
Early March saw a fatal grade crossing accident in Biloxi, Mississippi, involving a casino tour bus and a CSX freight train. News of...
GLBR now or never? An argument in favor of now
Something called the Great Lakes Basin Railroad (GLBR) has been an idea in the works since 2011. I’ve written about this idea in...
Electrification as environmental palliative
Near the end of last week’s blog post, I noted nothing railroad related was happening on the political front. The day before I posted,...
Surprises
As 2017 reaches its stride, the news on railroads, both passenger and freight, appears to be evening out as well. Not that there weren’t...
Wick won't stick
As reported in the March issue of Trains, Amtrak’s new president, Wick Moorman, has gone on the record with his intention of having a...
Happy Valentine's Day - Coal is up
The Association of American Railroads, an industry group, reports that coal carloads on American railroads are up 26 percent over last...
Changes for the future
Two interesting developments were in the works just as I was writing last week’s blog about infrastructure. The first of these involves...
Railroad infrastructure
The new president’s plans for rail infrastructure improvement have been hard to come by, but showed up on lists reportedly circulated in...